What on a breakpoint, a daily look and an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth? For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

In his sermon on the Mount, Christ promised that persecution would come.

Likewise, in a final letter to his protege Timothy,

St Paul declared, indeed all who desire to live a godly life

in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

That's pretty blunt.

Now unlike our brothers and sisters and other parts of the world,

Christians in the West have, for the most part,

enjoyed a kind of reprieve from such realities.

Still, the cultural pressures on people of faith

to comply, to evolve, to stand down, to remain silent,

or to otherwise conform to the spirit, the behaviors,

and the beliefs of our age is, by most accounts, on the increase.

And that's why this year the Coulson Center National Conference, which will be held May 30th

to June 2nd in Arlington, Texas is all about courageous faith.

In fact, the event launches with a worldview intensive

in which we'll hear from a remarkable woman of God, Camila Bindova,

who courageously led her family and loved on her community during

times of incredible persecution by communist oppressors.

She'll be joined on stage by Rod Dreier, author of Live Not by Lies, where I first encountered

Bendova's story of courageous faith. A few seats for this conference and for

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